Japanese woman on the bus

Yesterday I took the bus home from the train station and sat next to another person.  Another and another person, so rich is this city.

She was texting on her phone, but I couldn't help notice the hiragana, and then the katakana for Nyu Yohku.  Nihonjin.  A person from Japan.  I admit, I think I became a little creepy.  Probably she could tell that I was noticing how she kept checking the Google Map app on her phone to track the place of the bus on its route.  As subtle as I can be, to a Japanese person, there is no hiding.  I imagined phrases that I could ask her, but nothing was quite right.  She obviously didn't really need my help, and the only way I could formulate that was, "Are you ok?"  or "Help?" (me?, you?, unclear ambiguous Japanese formation that I couldn't really remember).  So I just sat there and noticed the fashion backdrop on her screen, the way that she gently tapped her fingernail on it.

The temperament of a place is so special, and also special is the way it is worn on its people.  And as much as it bothered me at times to live there for this very reason, the uniformity of Japan and the Japanese people, especially compared to a beautifully chaotic place like New York, seems sacred.  I could almost imagine advocating a life towards that kind of purity were I to have come from such a culture.  It has always perplexed me how Japanese people balance their culture with the modern world.

As I sat there thinking about the person sitting next to me, I realized that I was not on my phone, nor reading a book, but was taking in my surroundings, also noticing the woman across from me, quite obviously happy with her reading.  I was being a "tourist," someone that does not yet feel the pressure to suppress their awareness of their surroundings, someone who unabashedly takes in the people in their surrounding space.  I encountered two tourists like this two nights earlier on a semi-late night train ride home.  Nothing marked these friends as tourists except that they noticed me (and my cello) when I got on the train (and then later openly conjectured about life living New York).  We learn not to really see the people around us, at least not in the invasive way that I was with the woman sitting next to me.  People are so fascinating.  But just because we must share the public transit together does not mean that we welcome others to observe us deeply, to create explanations for our dress and mannerisms.  What if we all really saw one another?  How would that feel?

I didn't like being noticed by the tourists.  I appreciate the anonymity that the New York attitude allows.  People tend to notice if something really smells or is dangerous, but otherwise, anything goes, no questions asked with words or eyes.  This is nice.

But so too is the constant reminder of other lives.  For the 15 minutes that I sat next to my Japanese friend, I was transported to Japan, to the way that people move and think, and to my own puzzling of the language.  What a wonderful resource we have in this city.  If only we were allowed to become absorbed fully in that treasure.

Treatment

The hair stylist told me she was going to use protein-based products on my hair to help strengthen it.  I don't know what other options there were.  I wondered whether infusing it with star dust would confer celestial properties, or something similar.  If only the world took on the qualities of what surrounded it.  If only we could be so easily influenced.  

Getting angry at a baby for holding its bottle the wrong way.  If I lived in a different place I may not have seen this interaction, might not have thought about the way we talk to any age of child, or human for that instance.  Does the student who seems to neglect his thumb, or the one who forgets the way she sits on her chair mean to be so?  How do we infuse knowledge?  What is fair to expect?

The Presence of Others

I rarely have a bad day, but this morning certainly seemed to be tipping in that direction.  I'm getting slightly sick, am mulling over a schedule conflict wherein I need to choose between personal and professional life, and Trump is doing Trump things which always feels bad.  And then as I hurried to the train to get downtown, the 1 train wasn't stopping in the direction I needed because of a medical emergency.  I had to go uptown three stops, and transfer to a downtown train......Things just seemed to be piling on.

On the train, I happened to sit down next to a man named Ron.  On the other side of Ron was a friend of his, and on the other side of this friend was a woman that kept reminding them not to share the voices in their heads.  They would talk about or to people that weren't there, and she was obviously there to oversee them as their caregiver.  A few stops later, another similar group got one, speaking to themselves, swaying, with another caregiver that acknowledged the first group.  

I was swept from my world of worries to theirs.  They lived in another reality, one in which there weren't scheduling conflicts which required their own volition, one in which somebody else helped them get from one place to another, one in which perhaps even Trump couldn't touch them.  Their world was something foreign to me, and to the other people on the train.  It belonged to them and within them.  It most certainly had its own fears, angers, sorrows, but they were not my own.  It was such a relief to be in their presence for several stops and to be taken out of myself.

I finally arrived at my destination and walked into an Early Childhood Education Suzuki class.  And once again, I was taken outside of myself for the next hour, absorbed in young minds discovering the world around them.  These were still worlds with sorrow, of distance from mom and finding her again, of confusion, of pain.  But living in these other realities took me away from my own.  It was because they were real that they pulled me out of myself. 

I think finding another's pain, joy, suffering, happiness, is one of the best ways to open the window a little wider.  We need not only be ourselves.  There is a whole other world to see when we borrow the presence of others.  

LR

Spent the day with my best friend from high school, who has offered to do my make-up for a special occasion.  Some things are truly timeless, regardless of how long it has been since we've seen one another, and regardless of the changes happening in life.  Something really special about having a person with a shared memory from so long ago, that was shaped by similar things, that understands me in a unique way.  No value can be put on that.

Spring in New York

It's so magically cool and warm.  There are storm clouds around the city from time to time, and the walkways are suddenly bursting in green, as though there was never green before.  If somebody told me that every spring we get younger the older we get, I would believe them.  This seems like the first spring.

Maybe because everything around me is opening itself to the world, I feel at greater ease doing the same.  Every year, it is the same, and yet never in winter can my body believe it could be possible.  Are we guarded, are we open-chested; or are we  copying the trees that silently, patiently stand around us, living as they are, changing with the sun from day to day?  A tree is cold, a tree is warm, living happens below the surface and above it, hiding and then sharing with all the world.  Might we give ourselves this freedom, even in the months that seem so boarded, so tired, so constricted?  Does the root have spring in it, or does it need the world to be so?

Possible

There are so many lives to live in New York.  And for better or worse, there are so many lives to live that show themselves to the world.  Perhaps it is possible to live in isolation here, but public transit alone seems to preclude that.  And with so many lives, right there in front of my eyes, I can see all the possibilities there could be.

I don't ever envision being a Broadway actor, or holding a job in financial risk management, but seeing an orchestra perform certainly raises my awareness of a possibility and something that I miss.  Tonight I was able to see a wonderful performance, one of those in which the string players might be seen leaning to their side to share a moment with their stand partner, perfectly matching one another's bow speed and articulation.  I'm not sure that playing in an orchestra was always a transcendent musical experience, but it certainly was possible to connect with others in a very intimate way, one that has no parallel in other parts of living.  I miss the depth of listening and anticipation, trying to follow another as the move and breath.

There are so many avenues to be taken in life here.  And sometimes that can be overwhelming.  It is so easy to find ways to stay busy and involved in meaningful endeavors, but there are so many of them.  It can be hard not to get caught up the tide of things going the way that they go, landing as they happen to land.  Doors open and I go through them, but I don't feel that I've been the one to open them in a long time.  So maybe it's time for a lesson, or a quartet, or something of the sort, to keep things growing and alive in as many ways as possible.

Man on the Train

It is still such a pleasure to be living in New York.  In the past week or so, I've had several errands throughout the city.  And that means reading on the train, walking through a new neighborhood, and seeing new people.  I dropped off a dress in the financial district, a backpack in SoHo, and visited Brooklyn to see the glorious cherry blossoms at the botanical gardens. 

Nearly every time I travel in this way,  I see a person that seems interesting in some way, or have a meaningful interaction.  

Today's goes to the man I sat next to on the train.  When I stepped on I noticed his black baseball cap, his camouflage oversized backpack, his tattoos, and the way he leaned forward in his seat.  Over the course of sitting next to him, he pulled out a bottle of a banana smoothie, something I had not put into the box I put him in.  And then a large book opened in his hands, one that was printed in such a way that made me think that the words were valuable in some way, not a cheap or quickly written book, something a little more hefty.  Again, my stereotype was poked through.  And then as I looked more closely, at the back of the book, I noticed that it was in German.  Suddenly it all made sense.  I was transported to Germany for the single stop that I had finally become aware.  Here was a piece of a country, that was practical, resourceful, tough, intellectual, fastidious.  

How wonderful to come so close to someone on the course of a commute.  So close to a culture that I've never visited.  To take in a small essence of something different than what I assume, and to be reminded of that.